Occasionally, I've talked in bits and pieces about the weird West Coast extension of my family, my wife-in-law and my bonus children (I won't use the "step" word) , but a family dinner this weekend, I decided to expound a bit. This will sound wrong and may get me in trouble, but what the hell.

I met my husband playing chess. Online. While we were both married. To other people. And I lied about almost everything about myself. Not because I was trying to be someone else, but because at the time I was convinced that the only people online were serial killers. I was the exception, of course.

So now that you know we're bad people, let me explain. Being in the middle of an ugly (and there are other kinds of.) divorce I was seriously done with anything having a Y chromosome and Love-of-my-life was "happily married". For three years we played chess daily and he never knew my name. In all that time, not once, at all, did we ever come close to having a discussion that even remotely involved sex.

That may not seem unusual except that early on in my forays into the digital world I was genuinely shocked to find out a woman cannot talk to a man for long before the subject inevitably turns to sex. How that happens on a site devoted to playing chess I have yet to understand. Can there BE anything less sexual than chess? Actually, come to think of it, some of those pieces are a little provocative, but I'm a southern girl and you don't talk about sex with someone unless you're thinking about having sex with someone and you don't have sex with someone unless you're quite sure you might want to have children with them, and I say this loving sex a whole lot, but what can I say, I'm that woman. Love-of-my-life and I are married because he is that man.

Fast forward three years, unbeknownst to me, his wife wants to not be his wife, or more to the point, she wants to be happy and was honest enough with herself and him to say,

"This ain't workin' for me. It's not working for you either, but neither one of us wants to say uncle. This is me saying 'Uncle.'"

It was years before I knew the actual details, but at the time, what I did know is that he offered to help me find a job at a time when I desperately needed one and a few months later, we met. Me, the permanentlycelibate lesbian, still thinking,

"He's happily married and if that wasn't enough, he has a Y chromosome. I'd hate him if I didn't like him. Mmmm.. safety."

Meanwhile, he's thinking thinking.

"Mmmmmm tasty."

I didn't get the job, but six years ago today, I did get the man and his family and I am deeply in love with them all. Last Sunday night, sitting around our dinner table with Love-of-my-life, his ex-wife, her husband, my two bonus children, one girlfriend, a few strays and my bad dog, I realized the only thing wrong about the situation was that the daughter I gave birth to was in Seattle. This is the other kind of divorce, the kind where you remain friends, and sit down to dinner on Sundays with good food, good wine, good people,good love and yes, a little weirdness, but only when we think about it. We try not to think about it.

GG,True, the bonus family was all there as it all happened. The "trouble" to which I hinted was based on a story that originally appeared in the NYTimes where this couple announced their wedding and how they met. I was shocked and given my story, that's sayin' somethin'!

Lesa,It is amazing and has taught me to stop trying to forge the world the way I think it should be. I have no clue and it's just better when I admit that.As to the chess. Yes, but since my husband is so much better than me, he doesn't enjoy it. I don't care about winning as long as I feel like I played well. He feels like he's being mean.

A poem, "Cooked Heads" was the inspiration for this place. There is a line within it that says, "Heros do not stay lined up in ranks very long." Cookheads the blog has broken rank and moved in the direction of something heroic. What that will be is for us to discover together. Below is the link to that path.